Metal Induced Crystallization

Crystalline semiconductors in the form of thin films are crucial materials for many modern, advanced technologies in fields such as microelectronics, optoelectronics, display technology, and photovoltaic technology. Crystalline semiconductors can be produced at surprisingly low temperatures (as low as 120C) by crystallization of amorphous semicon

Crystalline silicon is a key component in many modern technologies, but can be difficult to produce. Ideally, thin films of crystalline silicon would be created by heating amorphous silicon to the point of crystallization (800 °C), but at this high temperature many low-cost substrates, such as glass and plastics, melt. As such, methods to lower the crystallization temperature of amorphous silicon are of great interest in materials research. This thesis looks at one such method, Metal-Induced Crystallization (MIC), in which contact with a metal induces crystallization of amorphous silicon at much lower temperatures. Specifically, we examine aluminum and beryllium induced crystallization, and investigate the variables within MIC that affect the crystallization temperature..

Nowadays,active-matrix addressing using a-Si TFTs is dominating in the flat panel display markets. However, low temperature polysilicon has been proposed and considered to be a promising alternative technology. Metal induced crystallization (MIe is one of the methods to obtain high quality polysilicon films at low temperatures. A few technologies are presented in this monograph, which improve the quality of MIC polysilicon film and hence the performance of TFTs built on. Amelioration of MIC processes has been made to produce high performance polysilicon TFTs using solution based MIC (SMIe and defined-grain MIC (DG-MIe methods. Novel post-annealing technologies are also introduced to reduce the micro-defects in MIC polysilicon film and hence to achieve better performance. These technologies include YAG laser post-annealing and flash lamp post-annealing. Particularly, it is the first time to report the application of flash lamp annealing technology in the fabrication of low temperature polysilicon and TFTs.